Those seeking to motivate a wide public to take ecological threats seriously--let alone change dangerous consumption habits--have historically faced all kinds of resistance, not the least of which is a general disinterest in the bland statistics of scientific data. Even if the facts and figures stack up to a catastrophic outcome, pie charts usually are not enough to channel the average attention span. The renowned New York electronic media atelier Eyebeam, however, is about to enlist designers and artists to come up with more compelling visual arguments to facilitate social change in the face of ecological deterioration. On September 15th, Eyebeam will present a panel at Brooklyn's Luna Lounge, where artists, designers, and creative technologists will discuss strategies for effectively conveying environmental data. Groups attending the event will also be invited to register for Eyebeam's Ecovisualization Challenge, a two-month-long design competition focusing on motivating ecological action through information graphics. Winners will be announced at a forthcoming show at Eyebeam. Part of the 2007 Conflux festival, the event will be followed by Rhizome's own panel on sousveillance.

'Autonomous Agents,' which opened on September 15th at Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery is the first major retrospective of American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson in the UK. Through new media and the moving image, Hershman Lesson has been creating and experimenting with non-linear narratives since the 1970s. Exploring themes of identity politics, surveillance, and artificial intelligence, her work occupies the spaces between the real and the virtual, the present and the archive--crossing these boundaries with a series of female characters who are highly adaptable to their surroundings (both 'Agent Ruby' and Roberta Breitmore have existed in multiple media over many years). Casting a critical eye on how women use technology and are viewed in relation to it, Hershman Leeson has recently shifted her critical gaze to broader issues of power and technology. Her recent feature film, Strange Culture, about the arrest and ongoing trial of artist Steve Kurtz, will also be a part of 'Autonomous Agents'--giving UK audiences a chance to appreciate the continuing relevance and breadth of this artist's remarkable practice. - Caitlin Jones

Brooklyn, New York, gallery Gitana Rosa is the first 'green' gallery in the borough--and among the first anywhere--adopting ecologically sound practices into its business model. Founded in 2006, it prints everything from invitations to price lists on recycled paper and donates 15 percent of every sale to a list of thoroughly-researched environmental organizations, in addition to taking numerous other steps to minimize its burden on the planet. Moving from ecology to geography, it has found a partner with an interconnected focus on the lay of the land in Glowlab. Another neighborhood gallery, Glowlab promotes radical experiments in psychogeography, and Gitana Rosa has invited several of its artists to take over a recently-acquired raw space, installing a series of site-specific installations. Artists producing projects include Montreal-based duo Jason Cantoro and Alice Jarry, Amsterdam's Cathelijn van Goor, and Mark Price of Philadelphia. Opened in conjunction with the Glowlab-hosted Conflux festival, the exhibition, 'Glowlab@Gitana Rosa,' runs through October 14.

Finally one can get more out of spying on the neighbors than a simple voyeuristic thrill, and this year's winner of the Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art, artfully shows us how. Park View Hotel by India-based artist Ashok Sukumaran uses surveillance systems to examine the contested relationships between surveillance, private property, and public space. Originally conceived for ISEA 2006 in San Jose, California, Sukumaran set up spotting scopes in Cesar Chavez Plaza and corresponding sensors inside the windows of the nearby Fairmount Hotel. When properly aimed, the spotting scopes would optically 'ping' the sensors, illuminating the room with a variety of colors. That specific color was then wirelessly transmitted back into the public square, illuminating the nearby light posts with the corresponding hue. This cycle of intrusion, capture, and reconfiguration between the public nature of the town square and the implied privacy of a hotel room illustrates eerily, but also poetically, how the public has the potential to override the binary relationship of public versus private.

Marisa Olson set up and moderated a fantastic panel yesterday afternoon at Conflux about Souveillance Culture. The panel was sponsored by Rhizome and gathered Amy Alexander, Jill Magid and Hasan Elahi, 3 artists whose work engages surveillance and explore the cultural and political implications of sousveillance. The panel assumed that we live in a surveilled society but also in a culture that likes to show and tell. Our society has shifted from one that cherished its right to privacy to a society that promotes the idea "if you see something, say something."

Hi I made a button for your browser that covers youtube movies in blood — please go install it and try it out when you get a chance. Works best on dull home videos, like video logs, etc… o, the horror of the mundane! (here’s a sample of what it does)

The latest gallery foray of conceptual artist Pablo Helguera is, somewhat surprisingly, comprised of small delicate collages. Constructed of images that reflect his travels through the Americas during his project, The School of Panamerican Unrest (SPU), Suite Panamericana--now on view at Moti Hasson Gallery in New York--is only one of the material outputs of this ambitious happening (which also includes a website, blog, and an upcoming documentary). In what is described as a 'nomadic think tank,' Mexican-born Helguera and other members of the SPU traveled by car through the Americas, from Anchorage, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina making 'official' stops along the way. Through performances, workshops, screenings, and discussions the SPU initiated a trade of ideas, devoid of the usual polemics of Pan-American trade and globalization. A public performance by Helguera on Thursday, September 20 at 7:30pm at Moti Hasson will surely illuminate these ideas further.

Latin America's largest exhibition devoted to video work, the 16th International Electronic Art Festival_SESC Videobrasil opens on September 30th and runs through October 30th. Its focus is the juried exhibition, Southern Panoramas, which gathers 66 works by artists from 17 countries with emerging talent from Brazil and neighboring Latin American states represented heavily. The event also features solo exhibitions and screening series of work by other distinguished film and video figures including Peter Greenaway, Marcel Odenbach, Kenneth Anger, and Eder Santos, among others. A new addition to the festival, this year's edition will also feature the announcement of artists selected for an inaugural series of artist residencies sponsored by the Associacao Cultural Videobrasil--the organization behind the festival. Already international in its scope, the residencies stand to further the festival's presence overseas, offering four Brazilian video artists and four from abroad the opportunity to work at institutions in France, The Netherlands, and of course, Brazil during a period spanning from 2008 to 2009.